ZIA UL-HAQ

General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, chief of the army staff (COAS), took
control of Pakistan by proclaiming martial law, beginning the longest
period of rule by a single leader in Pakistan's history. It ended only
with his death in a still-unexplained aircraft crash on August 17, 1988.
President Fazal Elahi Chaudhry remained in office until his term expired
in September 1978, when Zia assumed that office in addition to his role
as chief martial law administrator.

In announcing his takeover of the government, Zia stated that he had
taken action only in order to hold new elections for national and
provincial assemblies within ninety days. Political parties were not
banned, and nominations were filed for seats. The country expected that
a new "free and fair" poll would take place. It did not. Zia
canceled the elections because, he said, it was his responsibility first
to carry out a program of "accountability"; he had
"unexpectedly" found "irregularities" in the
previous regime. As a result, a number of "white papers" on
topics ranging from fraud in the 1977 elections, to abuses by the
Federal Security Force, and to Bhutto's manipulation of the press were
generated. The attacks on the Bhutto administration increased as time
passed and culminated in the trial and the hanging in April 1979 of
Bhutto for complicity in the murder of a political opponent.

After elections were canceled by decree on March 1, 1978, Zia banned
all political activity, although political parties were not banned. The
same month, some 200 journalists were arrested, and a number of
newspapers were shut down. Zia, however, maintained that there would be
elections sometime in 1979. Members of some of the PNA parties,
including the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Pakistan Muslim League, joined
Zia's cabinet as he tried to give a civilian cast to his government. But
suppression of the PPP continued, and at times Bhutto's widow, Nusrat,
and his daughter, Benazir, were placed under house arrest or jailed.
Elections for local bodies were held in September 1979 on a nonparty
basis, a system Zia continued in the 1985 national and provincial
elections. Many of those elected locally identified themselves as Awami
Dost (friends of the people), a designation well known as a synonym for
the PPP. Zia announced national and provincial elections for November 17
and 20, 1979, respectively, but these, too, were canceled. Many thought
that the showing of the Awami Dost made him fear that a substantial
number of PPP sympathizers would be elected. As further restrictions
were placed on political activity, parties were also banned.

On February 6, 1981, the PPP--officially "defunct," as were
the other parties--and several other parties joined to form the Movement
for the Restoration of Democracy. Its demands were simple: an end to
martial law and elections to be held under the suspended 1973
constitution. The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy demonstrated
from time to time against Zia's government, especially in August 1983,
but Zia was able to withstand its demands. Many of the leaders spent
time in jail.

Nusrat Bhutto brought a suit protesting the martial law takeover. The
Supreme Court ruled against her and invoked once again the
"doctrine of necessity," permitting the regime to
"perform all such acts and promulgate all measures, which [fall]
within the scope of the law of necessity, including the power to amend
the Constitution." After this ruling, Zia issued the Provisional
Constitutional Order of 1980, which excluded all martial law actions
from the jurisdiction of the courts. When the Quetta High Court ruled
that this order was beyond the power of the martial law regime, the
Provisional Constitutional Order of 1981 was issued. This order required
all judges of the Supreme Court and high courts to take new oaths in
which they swore to act in accordance with the orders. Several judges
refused to do so and resigned.

In February 1982, in an unsatisfactory response to the demand for
elections, Zia created an appointed Majlis-i-Shoora (Council of
Advisers), claiming that this was the pattern of Islamic law. The body
was clearly unrepresentative and had no powers of legislation. It served
merely as a tame debating body.

The Islamization of Pakistan was another of Zia's goals. In 1978 he
announced that Pakistani law would be based on Nizam-i-Mustafa, one of
the demands of the PNA in the 1977 election. This requirement meant that
any laws passed by legislative bodies had to conform to Islamic law and
any passed previously would be nullified if they were repugnant to
Islamic law. Nizam-i-Mustafa raised several problems. Most Pakistanis
are Sunni, but there is a substantial minority of Shia whose
interpretation of Islamic law differs in some important aspects from
that of the Sunnis. Zia's introduction of state collection of zakat
was strongly protested by the Shia, and after they demonstrated in
Islamabad, the rules were modified in 1981 for Shia adherents. There
were also major differences in the views held by the ulama in the
interpretation of what constituted nonconformity and repugnance in
Islam.

In 1979 Zia decreed the establishment of shariat courts to try cases
under Islamic law. A year later, Islamic punishments were assigned to
various violations, including drinking alcoholic beverages, theft,
prostitution, fornication, adultery, and bearing false witness. Zia also
began a process for the eventual Islamization of the financial system
aimed at "eliminating that which is forbidden and establishing that
which is enjoined by Islam." Of special concern to Zia was the
Islamic prohibition on interest or riba (sometimes translated
as usury).

Women's groups feared that Zia would repeal the Family Laws Ordinance
of 1961, but he did not. The Family Laws Ordinance provided women
critical access to basic legal protection, including, among other
things, the right to divorce, support, and inheritance, and it placed
limitations on polygyny. Still, women found unfair the rules of evidence
under Islamic law by which women frequently were found guilty of
adultery or fornication when in fact they had been raped. They also
opposed rules that in some cases equated the testimony of two women with
that of one man.

After the 1985 election, two members of the Senate from the
Jamaat-i-Islami introduced legislation to make the sharia the basic law
of Pakistan, placing it above the constitution and other legislation.
The bill also would have added the ulama to sharia courts and would have
prohibited appeals from these courts from going to the Supreme Court.
The bill did not pass in 1985, but after the dismissal of Prime Minister
Junejo and the dissolution of the national assembly and provincial
assemblies in 1988, Zia enacted the bill by ordinance. The ordinance
died when it was not approved by Parliament during the first prime
ministership of Benazir Bhutto (December 1988-August 1990), but a
revised shariat bill was passed by the government of Nawaz Sharif
(November 1990-July 1993) in May 1991.

Provincialism increased during Zia's tenure. He handled the problem
of unrest in Balochistan more successfully than had Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Zia used various schemes of economic development to assuage the Baloch
and was successful to a high degree. The North-West Frontier Province,
alarmed at the presence of Soviet troops next door after the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, remained relatively quiet. But
the long-festering division between Sindhis and non-Sindhis exploded
into violence in Sindh. The muhajirs formed new organizations,
the most significant-being the Refugee People's Movement (Muhajir Qaumi
Mahaz). The incendiary tensions resulted not only from Sindhi-muhajir
opposition but also from Sindhi fear of others who had moved into the
province, including Baloch, Pakhtuns, and Punjabis. The fact that Sindhi
was becoming the mother tongue of fewer and fewer people of Sindh was
also resented. The violence escalated in the late 1980s to the extent
that some compared Karachi and Hyderabad to the Beirut of that period.
The growth of the illicit drug industry also added to the ethnic
problem.

Pressure on Zia to hold elections mounted, and some of it came from
overseas, including from the United States. In 1984 Zia announced that
elections to legislative bodies would be held in 1985, and this time the
schedule held.

Zia decided to restore the separate electorates, abandoned under Ayub
Khan. In the National Assembly, ten of the 217 directly elected seats
were set aside for minorities: four each for Hindus and Christians and
one each for Ahmadiyyas and "others," including Parsis, Sikhs,
and Buddhists. There were also twenty indirectly elected seats reserved
for women, although women could run for directly elected seats. Zia
decided that parties would not be permitted to participate. Each
candidate, therefore, would be an "independent."

Before the general elections, Zia held a national referendum
ostensibly seeking a mandate to continue in office as president. The
referendum, on December 19, 1984, focused on Pakistan's Islamization
program. The electorate was asked simply if it felt the government was
doing a good job of Islamizing the various social institutions of the
state. Zia interpreted the positive results (98 percent voting
"yes") to mean that he had received the right to a new
five-year term as head of state. There was, however, little doubt that
the vote was rigged.

After the "election," which most PPP supporters boycotted,
Zia announced the appointment of Mohammad Khan Junejo as prime minister,
subject to a vote of confidence in the National Assembly. Junejo, a
Sindhi, took office on March 23, 1985. Zia issued the Revival of the
Constitution of 1973 Order, which was a misnomer. The constitution was
so vastly changed by various decrees that it was much different from the
one enacted by the Bhutto regime. In the 1973 document, power had been
in the hands of the prime minister; by 1985 it was in the hands of the
president.

Zia promised to end martial law by the end of 1985, but he exacted a
high price for this. The Eighth Amendment to the constitution confirmed
and legalized all acts taken under martial law, including changes to the
constitution. It affirmed the right of the president to appoint and
dismiss the prime minister. With the amendment passed, Zia ended martial
law in late 1985. Political parties were revived. In 1986 Junejo became
president of a revived Pakistan Muslim League. The PPP, although
self-excluded from the National Assembly, also resumed activity under
the leadership of Benazir Bhutto.

Junejo, however, was not able to accomplish all of Zia's agenda. For
example, his government did not pass the sharia bill. It allowed the
resumption of political parties, a step not welcomed by Zia, who saw
parties as divisive in what should be a united Islamic community.
Nonetheless, the dismissal of Junejo on May 29, 1988, and the
dissolution of the national and provincial assemblies the next day, came
as a surprise. In explaining his action, Zia pointed to the failure to
carry Islamization forward and also to corruption, deterioration of law
and order, and mismanagement of the economy. Another important reason
for Junejo's dismissal was his interference in army promotions and his
call for an investigation into an arsenal explosion near Islamabad;
civilians were not expected to meddle in military affairs.

Zia procrastinated on calling new elections, which even his own
version of the constitution required within ninety days. He finally set
November 17, 1988, as the polling date for the National Assembly, with
provincial elections three days later. His reasons for the delay were
the holy month of Muharram, which fell in August during the hot weather,
and the lack of current electoral registrations (a point he blamed on
Junejo). Despite the open operation of political parties, Zia indicated
that elections would again be on a nonparty basis. Before elections took
place, Zia was killed in a mysterious aircraft accident near Bahawalpur,
in Punjab, on August 17, 1988, along with the chairman of the joint
chiefs committee, the United States ambassador, and twenty-seven others.
A joint United States- Pakistani committee investigating the accident
later established that the crash was caused by "a criminal act of
sabotage perpetrated in the aircraft."

Court actions ended the nonparty basis for the elections, and parties
were permitted to participate. A technicality--the failure to register
as a political party--that would have prohibited the PPP from taking
part was also voided. The election gave a plurality, not a majority, to
the PPP. Its leader, Benazir Bhutto, was able to gain the assistance of
other groups, and she was sworn in as prime minister on December 1,
1988, by acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. He in turn was elected to a
five-year term as president by the National Assembly and the Senate.